It is well known that a remote unit's location within a wireless communication system may be determined using a trilateration method. According to such a method, distances between the remote unit and multiple base stations are calculated based on the measurement of a time delay of a signal traveling between the remote unit and each base station. Such a prior-art method for calculating a remote unit's location is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,508,708 "Method and Apparatus for Location Finding in a CDMA System" by Ghosh et al. and incorporated by reference herein. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,508,708, when location of a remote unit is desired, the remote unit may be instructed to increase the power at which it transmits to ensure that a sufficient amount of base stations are able to decode the remote unit's transmission.
Although increasing a remote unit's transmit power will serve to increase the number of base stations that the remote unit is in communication with, during the time that the remote unit is transmitting at increased power levels, other remote units operating in the same geographic area will be negatively affected since the increased transmit power will be generating additional system interference. In a commercial setting, where there can be many remote units requiring simultaneous location estimates, the simultaneous increase in transmit power for all remote units requiring location estimates can cause unacceptably high frame error rates (FERs), resulting in increased dropped call rates as well as reducing the ability of the wireless communication system to determine the location of the remote units. Thus a need exists for a method and apparatus for managing the increased power transmission of a remote unit during location.